From the NY Times.
The old textile mills here are mostly gone now. Gaffney Manufacturing, National Textiles, Cherokee — clangorous, dusty, productive engines of the Carolinas fabric trade — fell one by one to the forces of globalization.
Just as the Carolinas benefited when manufacturing migrated first from
the Cottonopolises of England to the mill towns of New England and then
to here, where labor was even cheaper, they suffered in the 1990s when
the textile industry mostly left the United States.
It headed to China, India, Mexico — wherever people would spool, spin
and sew for a few dollars or less a day. Which is why what is happening
at the old Wellstone spinning plant is so remarkable.
Drive out to the interstate, with the big peach-shaped water tower just
down the highway, and you’ll find the mill up and running again.
Parkdale Mills, the country’s largest buyer of raw cotton, reopened it
in 2010.
Bayard Winthrop, the founder of the sweatshirt and clothing company
American Giant, was at the mill one morning earlier this year to meet
with his Parkdale sales representative. Just last year, Mr. Winthrop was
buying fabric from a factory in India. Now, he says, it is cheaper to
shop in the United States. Mr. Winthrop uses Parkdale yarn from one of
its 25 American factories, and has that yarn spun into fabric about four
miles from Parkdale’s Gaffney plant, at Carolina Cotton Works.
